October 10, 1964
(For the past few months, Mother has often remarked that she could no longer see and was writing her replies without seeing. Once, she even said, “I am blind.”)
That’s another odd thing. All of a sudden, for no apparent external reason, even for no apparent psychological reason, I’ll see clearly, precisely – it lasts a few seconds, and then … it’s over. And it happens to me in entirely different circumstances. For instance, I’ll pick up a piece of paper: I’ll see as clearly as I did before; I’ll notice that I am seeing clearly – and it’s finished!
It has happened a little more often lately.
At times, on the contrary, I try; for instance, nobody is here to read me a paper, and I would like to read it – impossible; and the more I try, the more it fades into the mist. At other times, I WANT to see something (with a certain will), and I see it very clearly. It’s an apparent incoherence…. It must depend on another law, which for the moment I don’t know, and which rules the Physical. But for example, for some time now (a rather long time), at night I have been reading in my “sleep,” and I see very clearly: when I wake up, I am reading something that I am holding in my hand and I see very clearly. Therefore, it’s not the physical state that influences the night’s condition, it’s something else.
For a very long time, I used to see – see images, scenes and so on – I used to see, but I didn’t hear. Then, all of a sudden, I began to hear; and I would hear the slightest noise, I would hear in a perfectly coherent and natural way. It was as though the sense
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had suddenly developed. Well, there is a certain state of vision as a result of which I read – I read written things; now that I no longer read physically, I read at night. Which means that all this inner development of the physical and subtle physical is still a whole unknown world to be learned.
I don’t know its laws, I am only a spectator. And it obeys a will of an absolutely different order from the will at work in the physical world.
(silence)
But you understand, if you walk a path like this one, it may last a hundred years! And more.
There you have to learn everything, you know nothing.
I don’t know, but the feeling keeps coming to me very strongly that it doesn’t depend on a whole detailed work on this point, that point, that point …
No, no.
… and that in fact, one day, suddenly something will take place.
Yes, that’s right. Hints of this sort come and tell you, “Things will be that way, and that will be that,” and then it goes away. And when things are that way, they’ll just be that way. Yes, you’re right. You are right, that’s correct.
How many times, you know, it comes, it swells up like a tide, like a rising wave, that aspiration of all, all the material being, of all the cells, towards the Supreme: “All depends on You – all depends on You.” A sense of total helplessness and total incapacity, which in a second can be transformed through an Intervention into a total Wisdom.
And it’s the cells that feel this – the thought has said … it says all sorts of things, the earth is full of (when you see it in its totality, it’s really interesting!), the earth is full of all the human imaginings (which have been turned into “statements of facts”), even the most fantastic, the most contradictory, the most unexpected – it’s full of all that, it lives on that, it swarms with that – and the result is that the material world is convinced that all by itself, it can do nothing! Nothing. Nothing, nothing but that: that inextricable and apparently senseless jumble, which is nothing, which is an unbridled imagination in comparison with what can be.
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And then, this faith (it’s a faith in Matter) that in a flash (a “flash” … we don’t know, of course, it isn’t a question of “time” as we understand it materially), a trigger – and everything can be changed. Changed into the harmonious Rhythm of a Will expressing itself; and a Will which is a Vision: a Vision expressing itself, that’s really it; the harmonious Rhythm of a Vision expressing itself.
And all that we can think about it, imagine about it, deduce from it, all of that is nothing, nothing – it’s nothing, it doesn’t lead you THERE. What leads you THERE is the certitude, the inner faith that when the supreme … (supreme what? We can say Truth, Love, Wisdom, Knowledge, all of that is nothing, it’s words – the “Something”), when That expresses itself, all will be well.
And all that incoherence – false incoherence – will disappear.
(silence)
What’s odd, too, is that this conviction, this certitude is necessarily expressed in altogether different actions according to the person: it’s the SAME THING taking on different colorations in the aspiration of different consciousnesses.
For instance, I saw recently a sort of exhibition or procession of all the possible theories of humanity explaining the creation (the world, life, existence). All those conceptions came before me one after another, from the seemingly most primitive and most ignorant to the most scientific – and they were all (smiling) on the same plane of incomprehension … but ALL had the same RIGHT to express the true aspiration that was behind. And it was miraculous! Even the faith of the savage, even the most primitive religions and most ignorant convictions had behind them the same right to express that aspiration. It was wonderful. And then the sense of the “superiority of intelligence” fell away completely, instantly.
It is the same thing for those oppositions, those contradictions that are called “violent and vulgar” between the intellectual (and especially scientific) progress of the human species and, by contrast, the apparently foolish stupidity of those who react against conventions [[Mother may be alluding in particular to the follies of American youth. ]]; well, that feeling of inferiority or superiority that you find among so-called reasonable beings, all of that disappeared instantly in a perception of THE WHOLE, in which EVERYTHING – everything – was the result of the same Pressure (downward gesture)
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towards progress. It’s like a pressure exerted on Matter (same gesture) to draw the response out of it. And whatever form that response may take, it’s part of the general Action.
I told you last time what had happened: that sense of liberation; yes, a liberation from suffocation, and a kind of opening and well-being – that has become established. And the understanding (like the understanding of a detached witness) that everything, all those difficulties that come and pile up are absolutely indispensable so that nothing is forgotten in the march forward – so that EVERYTHING goes together; and that it’s only the vision of the details that blots out the vision of the whole.
Voilà.
It will be like the chick popping out of the egg all at once: as long as it’s inside, to the superficial vision there’s no chick; and all at once, pop! out it comes.
Let’s hope so!
* * *
As Satprem prepares to leave, Mother inquires about his health:
… Now, the last stage is that the body should forget it has been ill; that’s very important.
Very difficult.
It’s very important.
I am constantly struggling against pernicious suggestions. This physical mind gives me a lot of trouble – a lot of trouble. It has terrible apprehensions and fears.
Oh, absolutely.
You understand, it has received so many blows…
Exactly!
… that it lives in an anxiety which ruins everything.
Yes, yes.
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What can you do?!
Persist.
I saw it in my own case. It was interesting enough, because from my earliest childhood, I was in contact with the higher consciousness (gesture above the head) and in a real stupefaction at the state of the earth and people – when I was very little. I was in a stunned amazement all the time. And the blows I received! … Constantly. Each thing came to me as a stab or a punch or a hammer blow, and I would say to myself, “What? How is this possible?” You know, all the baseness, all the lies, all the hypocrisy, all that is crooked, all that distorts and undoes the flow of the Force. And I would see it in my parents, in circumstances, in friends, in everything – a stupefaction. It wasn’t translated intellectually: it was translated by that stupefaction. And when I was very little, the Force was already there (gesture above the head); I have a clear memory from the age of five: I only had to sit down for a moment to feel it, that Force which would come. And I went through the whole of life, up to the age of twenty or twenty-one (when I began to encounter Knowledge and someone who explained to me what it all was) like that, in that stupefaction: “What – is this life? What – is this what people are? What…?” And I was as though beaten black and blue, mon petit!
Then, from the age of twenty or twenty-five, that habit of pessimism began. It took all that time, all those blows, for it to come.
But with regard to health, whenever I had an illness (for me it was never an “illness,” it was still part of the blows), I had a trust, a complete assurance that it had no reality. And very young (very young, maybe around the age of thirteen or fourteen), every time a blow came, I would tell my body, “But what’s the use of being ill since you’ll just have to get well!” And that stayed until I was over thirty: what’s the use of being ill since you have to get well? And it faded away only little by little, with that growing pessimism.
Now I have to undo all that work.
But with you, it’s the same thing, because you were already conscious when you were small (without being conscious of it), and when all those terrible things [[Mother is alluding to the concentration camps. ]] happened to you, there was something that remained conscious, but those things “cultivated” the pessimism – that pessimism of the physical mind. And now you have to undo all that work. And what a work it is, phew! …
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You understand, it was IMPOSSIBLE, impossible for me to believe in (“believe” – even understand) all those movements of betrayal, of jealousy, all the movements of negation of the Divine in human beings and things – it was impossible, I didn’t understand! But it came from every side, striking and striking and striking…. So all that had to be undone.
And with you, it was the same thing – I know it very well. I know it very well. And for you it took brutal forms.
But we only have to hold out, that’s all.
We must erase the imprint little by little. And in fact, the only way to erase the imprint is to make contact with the Truth. There is no other way – all reasoning, all intelligence, all understanding, all that is totally useless with this physical mind. The only thing is to make contact. That’s just what the cells value: the possibility of making contact.
Making contact.
On the material level, japa is very good for that. When your head is tired and you are a little weary of forever contradicting that pessimism, you just have to repeat your japa, and automatically you make contact. To make contact. That’s something the cells value a lot. A lot. It’s a very good way, because it’s a way that isn’t mental, it’s a mechanical way, it’s a question of vibration.
There, mon petit, we must endure.
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